This paper presents series on top shares of income and wealth in Spain over the 20th century using personal income and wealth tax return statistics. Top income shares are highest in the 1930s, fall sharply during the first two decades of the Franco dictatorship, and have increased slightly since...

This paper analyzes income and earnings concentration in Portugal from a long-run perspective using personal income and wage tax statistics. Our results suggest that income concentration was much higher during the 1930s and early 1940s than it is today. Top income shares estimated from reported...

When a very top group of the income distribution, infinitesimal in numbers, owns a finite share S of total income, the Gini coefficient G can be approximated by G*(1 - S) + S, where G* is the Gini coefficient for the rest of the population. We provide a simple formal proof for this...

There have been important studies of overall income inequality and of poverty in South Africa. In this paper, we approach the subject from a different direction: the extent and evolution of top incomes. We present estimates of the shares in total income of groups such as the top 1 per cent and...